Managers-Net

Action Management

'A report is an action document' - in this context it is possible to develop a
business review rationale that looks at an organisation's management processes -
how the organisation develops, distils, communicates, stores and retrieves
information that is the 'stock in trade' of its business.

Action Management is defined as the management authorisation and review process that
ensures that research and development work on received or collected information
/ material, irrespective of medium, is in line with business needs, has clear
aims and is compliant with the law and policy. The discipline is an inherent
part of the management process and is most prevalent in Government Agencies in
the crime and disorder field, although these organisations are not exclusive
users of the discipline.

Those organisations that would most benefit from this discipline are those that have
mapped Key Processes to Strategic Risk and have complemented same with a regime
of Standard Operating Procedures, the review and updating of which are used to
mitigate risk.

Inevitably, this process looks a bit like 'teaching people to suck eggs' - in defence this
is a process that sets itself apart in that a best practice regime and
'benchmarking' following induction and adaptation are natural bi-products.

In essence, the 'action management' process is the means by which an organisation controls
and directs activity, new and old, for the development of its business
knowledge base - the system procedures will allow for the proper cross
referencing of source material to actions and subsequent product or service -
any such reported procedural review act as a well informed state of progress.

Typical component facets of Action Management:

Authorisation Procedures - vital to some business
functions of a sensitive nature - a unique reference generation is paramount to
process

Action Specification Process - where the imperative of
the action is a definitive written instruction to carry out approved
development of a business strand - the specification defines the instruction
(action needed), its priority (time-framed) and qualifies the production
process of the result

Students researching Action Management programmes are
advised to research further Case Management principles and practice operating
in both the public and private sectors. A number of extremely potent bespoke
systems have been developed and their comparison with Action Management may
prove useful - the specific inference of an Action Management regime is that it
operates in those organisations where the 'Action' and its subsequent results
add significantly to business knowledge where such development was pre-supposed
to achieve same; a pre-requisite exists in the sense that a reasonable
expectation of impact is identified at the outset. Action Management,
therefore, is construed as part of the Business Planning round.